Children's health (21)
- Adoption: Talking to your child about adoption
- Cold medicines for kids: What's the risk?
- Children's nutrition: 10 tips for picky eaters
- see all in Children's health
Preschoolers (10)
- Child sleep: Put preschool bedtime problems to rest
- Sex education: Talking to toddlers and preschoolers about sex
- Constipation in children
- see all in Preschoolers
Elementary students (10)
- Sex education: Talking to your school-age child about sex
- Bullying: Help your child handle a school bully
- Children's illness: Top 5 causes of missed school
- see all in Elementary students
Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Bullying: Help your child handle a school bully
Childhood bullying can have lifelong consequences. Listen to your child's concerns. Then help your child create a plan to stop bullying in its tracks.
By Mayo Clinic staffBullying was once considered a childhood rite of passage. Today, however, bullying is recognized as a serious problem. Up to half of all children are bullied at some point during their school years, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. And thanks to tech-savvy kids, cyberbullying and other forms of electronic harassment are now commonplace — even in elementary schools.
To help your child handle school bullying, learn to recognize it — and know how to respond.
Types of bullying
Any child can be bullied, particularly younger children and those who have few friends or are easily intimidated. At any age, bullying can take many forms. For example:
- Physical bullying includes hitting, punching, kicking and other types of physical harm, as well as destruction of a child's property.
- Verbal bullying includes teasing, name-calling, taunting and racial slurs, as well as spreading gossip or malicious rumors.
- Cyberbullying includes harassing e-mails or instant messages, as well as intimidating or threatening Web sites or blogs.
The consequences of bullying
Children who are bullied may be afraid to go to school. They may complain of headaches or stomachaches and have trouble concentrating on schoolwork. In the long term, the consequences of bullying may be even more severe. Children who are bullied have higher rates of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and other mental health conditions. Children who are bullied are more likely to think about suicide. Some of these wounds may linger into adulthood.
Next page(1 of 2)
